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Wednesday, June 6, 2018

IWSG: Book Titles vs Character Names

Time flies and here we are again! It's the first Wednesday of the month when our Insecure Writer's Support Group writer's tribe make the rounds to visit, touch base, share and support our fellow writers.

This month's optional question is:What's harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?

I write cozy mysteries. As a genre, titles of cozies tend to be punny. So fans of the genre know right away that this isn't the kind of read that's going to stress them out. In part, it's why we read the genre. It's so important to get the title right. My current WiP is a short story called, Lady Sings the Boos. You can probably guess that the story is about a ghostly jazz singer from the title. It's punny and fun. I don't know why, but it just came to me and I'm sort of in love with it right now. I am never going to say that titling is easy because *whispers* the title gods might decide I'm getting too cocky and put me in my place. Lately I'm finding character names harder to come up with. I mean, every Tom, Dick and Harry is named...Tom, Dick and Harry. Which reminds me, Lady Sings the Boos has a "Tom" in it. *scribbles note to change Tom's name to anything but Dick or Harry*

How about you?

Which do you find harder, titles or character names?Do you find either of them easy?

It is fun! Sometimes I get so tickled with some of the things I come up with. Unusable but fun anyway. But it’s not always fun and easy. Sometimes or even often I struggle with titles. It’s all part of the process.

I have to say, I love coming to your blog because your header always makes me smile! It's just so adorable! Ditto with the ghost sashaying across on your website. You clearly have the punny title thing in hand. Maybe sometime you can share the unusables - I bet they're hilarious. Naming characters - always a challenge.

I love cozy mysteries (and have written one), and I've noticed that the titles are often "punny". Your book sounds great: ghosts and jazz. I'm hooked. I've just been reading the IWSG Tick Tock a Stitch in Crime anthology. I'm halfway through it and I LOVE it. When I finish, I'll be reviewing it.

Great title! Since my first cozy set the pattern for my titles ("Death By..." something offbeat), I've actually been getting the titles first, which is a fun way to go--sets my mind to working on what it might mean! I've even got the next one, which like the most recent was actually more or less given to me by a friend.

LOL, definitely wise of you to avoid doing anything that could anger the Title Gods! Absolutely love that title of yours, btw--so fun! And I know what you mean about character names. It sometimes takes me months to figure one out, anymore!